The exemplary embodiment relates to Variable Information Printing. While it is particularly directed to the art of digital image processing, and will be thus described with specific reference thereto, it will be appreciated that the exemplary embodiment may have usefulness in other fields and applications.
By way of background, Variable Information Printing (or VIP) is a form of on-demand printing in which elements such as text, graphics and images may be changed from one printed piece to the next without stopping or slowing down the press, using information from a database or external file. Color variability without ripping is currently not addressed in VIP printing, where the color could be customized in all the object types depending on the customer or market preferences. For example, consider an automobile marketing campaign in which customer “A” would like a black car with a white graphical design. At the same time, this would not be appealing to customer “B” who would like to see the same car with a blue graphical design. Currently, this could be achieved only by “ripping” the document with different sets of objects. This affects overall performance and requires extensive upstream manual process on each object.
Thus, there is a need for a procedure which enables customer to create variable/personalized color images during the rip time without changing the document. This provides the user with the flexibility of changing color in a specific object without extra time and money.